


The Happy Few

by haeresitic



Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: F/F, Gen, Pacific Rim AU with no PR characters, drunk Tony Stark w
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-13
Updated: 2013-08-13
Packaged: 2017-12-23 08:15:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/923999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haeresitic/pseuds/haeresitic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Pacific Rim AU] Heroes save the world. Natasha Romanova is not a hero--with the exception of Steve, none of them is. What they are is a motley crew of spies and mercenaries and vigilantes. And then there's her new potential co-pilot: she holds no delusions of heroic grandeur. Do they deserve to save the world?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Happy Few

**Author's Note:**

> "In our calling, we have to choose; we must make our fortune either in this world or in the next, there is no middle way."  
> Stendhal, The Red and the Black, Vol 1, Ch 8

It’s almost impossible to sneak up on Natasha Romanova, but Nick Fury did. It’s not a testament to Fury’s skills—although Natasha herself would be one of the first people to admit that he’s got plenty—that he could put one firm hand on her shoulder when she had her back to him and that that little touch made her jump like a Kaiju skin parasite on a hot iron-cast wok. (What  _is_  a testament to his skills is that he managed to slip out of Natasha’s reactionary arm-lock without losing any functionality in his arm).

Natasha had looked into the heart of the Jaeger in front of her, and it stared right back at her. She would probably have not looked up even if Pietro had run past her carrying a belching Logan throwing beer cans everywhere. The heart of the Jaeger burned like a white star; it burned dark spots in her vision. When Fury’s hand lightly grazed her cheek the coldness of the world spread like a wave breaking against the shore: she gasped as if she was drowning and she’d just broken the surface of the water, but the air was not sweet and blissful; it was thick with machine grease and ozone from welding guns and despair and hopelessness that seem to increase with each second of the war clock.

It had only been twenty minutes since Natasha’s last protest that she was not a hero. She was now a spy, she worked in the shadows, and what the public wanted right now was knights in $4 billion armours who could wear the glory and adulation as well as they could those armours.

She was due for another protest, but instead she asked:

“What’s her name?”

Fury shoved his hand into the pocket of his trench coat. “You tell me.”

Natasha leaned a little against the railing separating her and the nameless Jaeger. Then she pushed herself to stand straight. “Wait,” she said, “the last time I checked, solo pilots are still prohibited.”

“Yeah, that’s the law. Don’t worry about that,” said Fury, “we’ve found a perfect co-pilot candidate for you.”

When she narrowed her eyes at him the dark spots the Jaeger had burned into her were gone. “If you think I’d go back to sharing a mind with Shostakov, I’m going to shove this invitation of yours up a special place.” She kept her eyes fixed at Fury, partly to stop herself from turning around to look at the Jaeger behind her— _what if she had been the Red Guardian all along?_

“Relax, Natasha,” said Fury, smiling a little. He took out a small tablet from his pocket and threw it at her. “Here’s your potential co-pilot.”

The video was twenty seconds long: it started with a woman surrounded by a group of men, all of whom were easily twice her size; it ended with everyone groaning and writhing on the floor, the woman gone. Technology could not keep up with her movement, but years of training and experience allowed Natasha’s mind to fill the gap. She recognised the lonely dance of brutal efficiency, the steps were there, but the woman improvised with Eastern martial arts.  Sublime, she thought, the way she moved, she was a calligraphy stroke on a canvas.

“See a little bit of yourself in her?”

She passed the tablet back to him and let him lead her to where she needed to be.   

 

 

 

Operation Fleming. This was humanity’s newest Grand Plan: we were going to spy on the Kaiju. Three specially designed stealth Jaegers would sneak into their doorstep in the Pacific, learn as much as they could, and then hopefully cause as much destruction as they could while leaving.

“This is why we need not just the best soldiers, the best fighters, the best heroes for this program,” said Fury, hands still shoved down his coat pockets as he paced the war room, “we need the best covert agents, we need—”

“Vigilantes? Mercenaries? Assassins?”

Tony Stark gave everyone in the room a crooked smile above his Steuben glass. Neither his partner Colonel James Rhodes nor his assistant Pepper Potts was there to hold his leash, and nobody else in the room was going to stop the engineer-cum-Jaeger-designer-cum-pilot from refilling the whiskey in his glass, or to stop that sharp (intoxicated) wit from adding more awkwardness and tension to the room.

Fury gave Stark a soul-sucking one-eyed glare, but Steve’s voice provided the coolant for the room. “Tony,” he whispered. He had one hand on James Barnes’s shoulder; James himself wasn’t concerned with Stark, he was staring at a spot off to the left of Natasha’s. She let him catch her eye once or twice, but otherwise she kept her gaze at Fury.

“Sorry, Steve,” grinned Stark, “I shouldn’t have lumped you with this bunch. You great hero, you. You know I know that.”

“Tony,” said Steve, his voice barely above a whisper, but it had the edge of a cold sharp steel blade, “these men and women are all heroes. They’re risking their lives for humanity to find out a little bit more about the Kaiju. And they’re doing so without asking for anything in return.”

Stark got up, impressively not swaying as he did. “Careful, gents,” he said as he walked past Steve, and then Fury, “Next thing you know you’ll be hauling up those model citizens from, say, the Vault, or the Raft to be humanity’s heroes.”

Natasha let her eyes follow Stark and what he thought was his dignity out, and then she let them wander around the room. James was talking to Steve, she thought he heard him say something about Stark being a Jaeger piloted by two of the world’s biggest assholes because there was no way a human being by himself could contain so much bullshit.

“But he’s right though,” muttered James even as Steve allowed himself a small chuckle, “maybe a little bit.”

She recognised some of the others from her days in the service. The white man in a neat suit with a receding hair line was Phil Coulson; he looked like he was in a serious discussion with Fury, but Natasha’s above-average-hearing could catch a few choice words referring to Stark. The woman with a dark pixie haircut flipping through a file on top of a pile of other files in her hands was Maria Hill. Natasha had in her hand a similar file, which was why she knew the big man with slicked back jet black hair watching everyone grimly like a hawk at the back of the room was Frank Castle, and the other man with messy brown hair leaning his scruffy cheek against his hand on the table was Marc Spector.

The file didn’t say anything about her co-pilot. She flipped through it again, looking for the woman’s face.

“You’re looking for Elektra,” a voice she recognised as Maria’s said behind her. She passed her a thin smooth file. “As soon as we came up with this plan, we knew we wanted you on board. We had the brains come up with a list of potential partners—that’s what you’re looking at.” 

It wasn’t that long of a list. Natasha recognised some of the names, like Morse, Carter, Fortune, Belova, Sablinova. James made it to the list too—in fact, he was their second best choice for her. Elektra Natchios sat at the top, this stranger to whom a bunch of computers and calculations had decided she would be a perfect partner. She thought of the video Fury showed her. Every fibre of her muscles, every little part of her being knew the danced she danced.

“Where is she?” She didn’t let herself sound too apprehensive, too eager, but she let a little bit of the curiousity trickle out.

Maria took the file back and took another one, third from the top. “Do you like her?”

“I haven’t met her.”

“If you like her,” said Maria, passing her this new file, “do you want to help us find and recruit her for this mission?”

 

 

 

 

 

“That’s fucking funny,” said James, not laughing at all. Natasha could see his face in the rear view mirror and saw a ghost of a smile on his lips which she knew was not meant for what he called Fury’s and Hill’s idea of a joke. She turned to the window and watched the street go by.

All she had with her was a small sling bag with a set of pyjamas and day clothes each and toiletries. The thin file that contained what all the best minds around the world knew about Elektra was back in Maria’s safe hands, but the information within was in Natasha’ mind.

“A ninja,” she muttered, propping her chin daintily on her knuckles. “An actual ninja.”

“An assassin,” added James.

“We don’t get to judge her,” said Natasha quietly.

“I’m not judging her,” said James, maybe a little bit too defensively. When the car came to a halt at a traffic junction he let go of the wheel and ran one hand across his hair. “Although, y’know, we’re not like that anymore, we’re different now.”

“Are we?”

The car jerked start again. “Like Steve said, we could be … we are heroes.” James’s fingers tapped against the wheel erratically and Natasha just caught the glaze in his brown eyes clearing. “Oh hey anyway, if this thing doesn’t work out—if you end up killing her in self-defense or something—I’m more than happy to be your partner … (again).”

Natasha laughed. “And what about Steve?”

“Well, Steve’s got Sam, and together they’re the best of the best, so we won’t be one pair short.” Another traffic junction, and James took the chance to lean more comfortably back into his chair. “I can’t believe just how well Steve and I sync after all these time. It’s like despite everything that’s happened, when we’re Drifting, we’re those two boys from all those years ago. He still sees me as a brother, Tasha!”

Somebody honked at them. James cursed and got the car moving again.

“It’s really amazing how cool Sam is about sharing his partner with me, though,” he continued, a little lighter this time.

Natasha smiled quietly. She knew even if she were to fail to get Elektra as a co-pilot, James would still be piloting with Steve. After all, the PPDC were only persuaded to accept James into the mission with Steve’s guarantee that he would be ‘overseeeing’ him. And James needed this mission more than he would ever know.

The car turned a sharp right and she could see the small hotel she would be spending the night in: a simple building with no pretension to luxury or grandeur, five storeys tall, with white-framed windows dotting its simple grey-from-the-city façade. Its name was written in simple sans serif across a board sitting on its roof—Rendezvous Hotel. With its sliding windows, isolated location and sparse visitors, it was a dream hotel for an assassin.

I’m a plump cherry right for the picking, mused Natasha as James pulled the car over. There was no need to test Elektra’s skills; tonight’s little mission was all about efficiency. And the power of persuasion. It was a lot like a first date; she should have worn something special. 

When James stepped out of the car he slipped on his old leather jacket, the one with white stars on the shoulders. Natasha had not taken her grey double-breasted pea coat off in the car, but she put on a black knit-hat as she went out. They were going to check into two rooms as friends—online reviews of the hotel complained about the thin-as-leaf walls, but that was yet another reason they chose Rendezvous Hotel.

The lobby was small. There was a woman who looked no older than 19 in a velvet uniform sandwiched between a check-in desk running the breadth of the room, and wall-mounted wooden mail-boxes (or to be more exact, mail  _cubes_ ). There was a ceiling-mounted TV right across the desk, to which the receptionist’s eyes seemed to be glued the whole time she was handling their money and their room keys. She did look at them to smile a plastic smile and wished them a good stay. There was no bell-boy to carry their luggage, so it was a good thing they had only a light bag each. The lift was broken; they climbed the stairs to their rooms on the fifth floor.

By now the both of them were acting under the assumption that they were being watched. She was the would-be dead woman who ran away from a vengeful lover, he was the concerned friend. It was in-character for her to pause after unlocking her door to say to James, “Thanks for coming with me.”

He shrugged and smiled. It should have been some low-level agent who was to accompany her for this mission, but James (with Steve’s support) had fought for this chance to ‘catch-up’ with her. Natasha was pretty sure that James’s involvement meant there would be extra agents in and/or around this hotel to watch over him. That really explained Maria’s face (the extra planning! the extra paperwork!) when Fury had relented and let James come with her. 

They had had dinner along the way, so there was not much for Natasha to do until bed time,  which was when all the action would happen. She thanked Rendezvous Hotel for providing a bath-tub and spent a good long while soaking in the hot water (into which she had dumped the entire content of the little soap bottle the hotel had provided her with). This was definitely something a heartbroken woman would do. So was eating the peanuts from the snack bar in bed while watching reruns of bad 90s comedies set to laugh tracks. Natasha could will her body to sleep anytime, anywhere, and so after making a show of pacing the room in emotional distress, she dimmed the lights, took off her bath robe, slipped under the cover, tossed and turned, and slept.

Elektra charged quite a hefty sum for the premium service that is personalised killing. In this case, her client’s instructions were that the target was to be strangled to death with the sash of her bath robe, and that it was to be made to look like a robbery gone wrong. Natasha was barely skimming the surface of sleep, but she let out a steady light snore. When she heard the click of a light switch and the groan of the bed in the room beside hers, she knew James had gone to bed, and that the stage was set for Elektra’s dance. More than anything, she was curious as to how she was going to make her entrance. She strained her ears, but apart from the gentle breathing of the air-conditioning unit, all was silence.

Ninja, she thought again.

Would she come from the window? That would have been her first choice, personally. Would she knock on her door, playing room service? Would she drop in from the ceiling? Would she—

—the finger brushed against her cheek, poked a dent into her pillow, and Natasha kicked her feet up. She hit empty air, but the momentum brought her into a standing position. Ninja! she thought, her blood pumping hot and fast, she was going to paralyse me, and then strangle me once I’m a prisoner in my own body.

Elektra’s surprisingly uncovered face showed mild irritation with how jumpy her target was proving to be. A car sped past the hotel, and in its headlights Natasha could see the red of her suit—not the ninja robes she was expecting, but a cat-suit just like hers (although right now she was in t-shirt and slacks)—but once they were flung back into the darkness Elektra blended into the black, with only her face visible in the dim reflections of the street lights.

“Elektra,” said Natasha calmly despite everything, “I’m here to represent the PPDC and I’ve got a proposal for you.” 

Elektra’s calmness mirrored her voice: she was a calm stillness that seemed to float right in front of her eyes. And then she struck like a lightning, a crimson lightning, because another car’s headlights flashed around the room, and Natasha was so glad her back was to the window—if she was momentarily blinded she would have been impaled on this sharp glinting object being thrust at her. Then she realised there were two such objects, because Elektra’s other hand just threw another one at her, missing her waist but ripping her t-shirt.

The sai stabbed deep into the thin wooden wall separating her room and James’s. One down, Natasha thought, as long as she could keep her away from getting it back. The fighting paused, each of them eyeing the other. Natasha was now off the bed, which separated the both of them. Her blood pulsed in her ears. She knew she could hear it too, this beat. They danced the same dance, after all.  

Natasha wasn’t sure who leaped first, but they were rolling on the bed now, each trying to mount the other. In this tangle of flesh it was easy to disarm her; Elektra herself wasn’t keeping too tight a grip on the sai as her fingers pinched deep into Natasha’s wrist, trying to pin her arm above her head. It was easy for Natasha to flick her wrist, grab hold of Elektra’s, and twist the sai out of her hand. Now it would be good if she could keep Elektra’s attention away from the sai.

Thankfully Elektra was going old-school: Natasha saw her shoulders clenching and knew she was in for a pounding. She stayed still on the bed; Elektra automatically assumed full-mount to what she thought was her advantage. In the split-second before her fist reached her face Natasha locked her legs around Elektra’s back and twisted away, rolling her out of balance; they tumbled to the floor and scrambled up as gracefully as they could tangled up in the bed sheet.

“You were once involved in one of the earliest Jaeger programs,” Natasha started again even as she prepared herself, falling into combat sambo’s fighting stance, “and now the PPDC … humanity itself needs your talents again.”

Elektra was that calm stillness again. Except for her eyes—her dark eyes seemed to suck everything in the room in. Maybe she was mapping out the different ways she could kill her, or maybe she was listening. Natasha decided to continue—even while speaking she could also play out different fighting scenarios in her head, and maybe 5, no, 6 different ways to kill her from this range.

(She reminded herself that a dead Elektra would not be desirable.)

“We’re going to go to the Kaiju. We’re going to find out what they are, where they came from, and maybe, how to destroy them for good. You’re PPDC’s top choice for this mission. We need you. The human race needs you.”

Elektra kept quiet.

The dance started again. Natasha wanted to end this quickly; she wanted to grab her, pin her to the floor and get an acceptance out of her. But Elektra was fast, maybe as fast, if not faster than her. She went in, fished for a punch or a kick and then went out. She was teasing her. Natasha was trying to burn the curtain down on this dance but Elektra was conducting the orchestra. 

Natasha gritted her teeth. She hated being played at. She. Would. Take. The. Baton.

It was the simplest of takedowns: when Elektra darted in close again (was that a smirk on her face?) Natasha took a step to her left, one arm across her chest, and one leg behind all of hers.

Elektra looked up from the floor, dark eyes framed by black strands of hair spilling out of a scarf that, like her clothes, only turned blood red out of the darkness it would otherwise melt into.

“Did you understand what I said?”

No reply. Only a small smile and a swoosh of her leg that Natasha only narrowly avoided by executing a marvellous back flip. She had hardly landed when Elektra delivered another low kick still from a crouching position; it hit her right leg hard, but she willed herself not to buckle as she lifted her other leg and brought it down in an axe kick that found Elektra’s collarbone, unprotected from the above between her shoulder and head.

Something sounded like it had just cracked, but Natasha couldn’t celebrate because she was pretty sure her right shin was in as bad a state too. They crumbled to the floor together, both with the knowledge that the other was ready to sprung back into action despite the damage and the pain.

But Natasha stayed on the floor and tried to catch her eyes. “Nick Fury is offering you a lighter sentence in all the relevant jurisdictions for those murders you had committed, if you so choose to help us.”

When Elektra spoke, it was as if the world had gone silent—the hissing of the air-con, the little noises the broken and torn furniture made around them, they were gone. She spoke quietly, that is not to say, a whisper, but in a way that just makes you want to keep quiet and strain your ears to listen to her even though it was perfectly audible and clear to you.

“I don’t need that. I will never be caught unless I allow myself to be.”

There was no arrogance in that—it was stated as a fact, maybe a wrong one, but right now Natasha believed her.

“… Is that a yes?”

“I don’t play at being a hero. I don’t pretend to fight for humanity; I have no great love for humans,” she said, still in the same tone, except there was the slightest chilly edge to it which was enough to leave the hair at the back of Natasha’s hands standing.

“Humans are despicable,” replied Natasha despite a part of her already marking this mission as a failure, “I have no great love for them too.” A sigh. “I’ve looked into the heart of the darkness of humanity—it disgusts me, it repels me. It shows me what snivelling, cowardly, weak things humans are. It also shows me how alone we are. No one is going to rescue us but us.”

Her cracked shin was on fire, but every other part of her was taut and ready for any movement Elektra would make. The ninja kept her position though: half-kneeling with one fist resting on the floor to support her wounded shoulder, her hair covering her face like a curtain. She looked up, and the dark eyes met Natasha’s blue ones.

“So you’re fighting out of pity?”

Natasha shook her head. “I’m fighting out of duty.”

Silence fell upon them again. Natasha knew that James was pressing his ear against the wall, ready to jump into her assistance upon her signal. She never did plan to use the signal, but she took pleasure from his resisting to burst into the room despite all the noise they must have been raising. He really had grown up by a little bit.

She weighed her options now that the mission had most probably ended in failure. She could reassure Elektra that the PPDC would be paying her the promised amount for ‘killing’ her. What about arresting her, this famous assassin whose hands had taken so many lives? She had no warrant for arrest, and she remembered that there had never been any evidences collected against her (there was after all some truth in her previous statement that she would never be caught—at least for her past killings).  _Ninja_. She could take her down—permanently. Definitely. Maybe. She had a cracked shin but at least she didn’t have a cracked shoulder.

“Five thousand US dollars.”

“What?”

“I was given a meagre compensation as a lab rat for the Jaegers program years ago. This time I want a rate commensurate to my skills and reputation.  Five thousand US dollars. Per hour.”

Natasha blinked. This mission had suddenly taken a turn for the better, but she wasn’t sure if Maria Hill would agree, especially when presented with Elektra’s bill.

“Don’t worry about the one million I was promised for killing you. I didn’t kill you. I’ll return the deposit.” Elektra shifted and sat down with legs folded under her. With that, Natasha knew that the dance was over. She let her body relax, and immediately the ache and the pain from the damage Elektra had inflicted on her washed over her like a wave of fire.

Elektra’s face was a sea of tranquillity as she massaged the shoulder, which was getting visibly swollen. “Solo pilots are still prohibited, then?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re going to be my partner.”

“Yes.”

“Are you the best they’ve got?”

“Yes.”

Elektra stood up so suddenly Natasha instinctively jumped into a fighting stance, doing her shin no favour whatsoever. But all she did were take her sais, walk over to the window, unlatch it and slide it open. Nearer to the window the street light illuminated the dark maroon of her silhouette as she turned to Natasha.

“We’ll Drift fine then.”

A short while after she leaped out into the streets Natasha remembered that she hadn’t told her where they would be expecting her. Then again, it wouldn’t have been a problem for herself to find out the location, so it shouldn’t be a problem for her.

After all:  _Ninja._

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Ninjas!” Tony Stark made a wide waving gesture at the Jaegers behind him, “Ninja Jaegers, that’s what we’ve got here. We’ve managed to remake the Stark Stealth Armour system—code name  _Ghost—_  in Jaeger size and refit it to these three Jaegers specially commissioned for this mission. Here, look at…”

Stark made to consult his file but Castle saved him the trouble. “Retribution.”

“Right.  _Retribution_.” He pointed at the Jaeger to their left. “Now you see it…”

He snapped his fingers and the Jaeger shimmered into thin air.

Only a few people in the crowd in front of Stark gasped. The pilots of the three Jaegers merely watched on—they could perhaps see the air rippling a little around Retribution’s frame, and they could definitely still hear a muffled hum that was its heart.

“The cloak lasts for three minutes,” said Stark after a prolonged silence, and as he said this, Retribution flickered back into view. “And the system will take around forty five minutes to charge fully again. What you saw just now was Retribution blending into its surroundings, much like a chameleon, thanks to hundreds of intelligent cameras taking hundreds of pictures of the surroundings every second to be projected onto its armour. The cloak works not just visibly but also thermally. When functional, the cloak would also dampen any sound from within the cloak, for example, the Jaeger’s footsteps.

“We’re still fitting the other two Jaegers with Ghost—they  should be ready for  trial runs  in a week. In the meantime—yes, questions!”

“Nobody knows how the Kaiju sees or smells or senses, so how confident are you that this _Ghost_  isn’t $4 billion dollars’ worth of extra weight slowing us down?”

That was James. He was leaning against the railings facing the Jaegers, his face turned towards Stark with a too-innocent smile that the malice in his eyes ruined.

“Well, Bucky,” said Stark, trying to return the innocent-but-not-really smile at him, “would you rather go into this mission with nothing to hang your hats on?”

“I don’t usually wear hats on missions, Tony, they’re not exactly stealthy.”

“I rather like having options,” said a hoarse voice. Marc Spector was again in a white hoodie, over which he had thrown the standard Shatterdome bomber jacket, into which pockets his hands were shoved. “Bells and whistles, can’t hurt to have them, especially if it might hurt the other guy.”

“You won’t see us complaining about a little bit of extra weight,” added Castle, “so long as that gizmo of yours works the way it should.”

James threw them a dirty look and turned back to the Jaegers, now sinking a little bit more into his arms. The Jaeger he was directly in front of—Freedom Fighter—had just been painted a blue-grey, the first coat of the paint job they had in mind, and the same shade of their jumpsuits (the top of which James was not wearing, instead letting it hang down his waist revealing the grey regulation shirt undeneath). Natasha just managed to see him mouth  _goddamn mercs and vigilantes_ and she chuckled inwardly at his Espionage Elitism.

She turned her head slightly, just enough to see Elektra standing far behind, having that same exact expression lawyers do when they are physically present for the billable hours but every other part of their being is no longer in the same room. (She would know, having lived with a lawyer for one long sometimes-blissful year). Elektra blended in so well in her carnelian red jumpsuit with the rest of the crews that it was all too jarring for Natasha. It still felt too otherworldy, how she had walked into the Shatterdome three days ago like any other employee, found the war room, introduced herself to Fury and Hill, filled up the necessary paperwork and sat down for the briefing.

Any difficulty of thinking of her as the ninja in her hotel room a week ago was dispelled once they were in the Kwoon Combat Room. Ten hours of training on the first day and she proved that despite what Natasha believed to be her propensity towards Eastern martial arts she could handle Krav Maga and wrestling as well as the rest of them.

Today, after Stark’s Ghost display, they would go for their first trial Drift together. What is it like in your head, thought Natasha. Would it be electrifying, like the charge she felt on her skin when Elektra’s naked sweaty skin brushed against hers to sidestep her incoming blow? Would it feel like riding on an angry gust of wind like what she felt on her face when she narrowly avoided her spinning bo staff, then her swishing jet black hair, then her butterfly kick? Would it feel like standing bare-footed on solid ice like what she felt every time the dark eyes found hers in the middle of a spar and the coral pink lips curled into an almost-smile?

“This would be the first time Ghost would be implemented against Kaijus,” Stark was saying, “its success would depend on this mission, that is, on your hands, ladies and gents. These Jaegers right here, they are meant for heroes. I hope you’d prove yourself worthy of them.”

Beside her, Steve sighed. “What an inspirational speech,” she said to him.

“We’re not going to let anyone down,” he replied steadily, “least of all the Jaegers and Tony. How’re you feeling?” he added, moving to the side with her to allow the crowd to disperse, “Ready for the trial Drift?”

“Always.” She had spotted Elektra moving through the crowd to the railings, so she patted Steve on the shoulder and followed her partner. As they reached the railings, she heard Steve call for Bucky to grab lunch with him, and with the last of Tony’s audience trickling out of the hangar they were left alone, the three Jaegers the only ones watching them (the handful of engineers still working on the Jaegers presumably had their full attention on the robots).

“What’s her name?”

“You tell me,” replied Natasha. “And we should discuss the colour scheme sometime soon. Can’t face the Kaijus without looking the best we can.”

“Red and black,” came the immediate reply, “more importantly, the weapons. What does she have so far?”

“Red and black?” Natasha couldn’t help but stifle a grin. “And as for her arms, she’s got nothing. She’s a blank slate right now—they’re going to see what we’re comfortable with after our first Drift, and then add our preferred weapons to her. Red and black?”

“Yes. It’s our Jaeger, isn’t it?”

“If we Drift succesfully this afternoon, yes. Is that how you think of us? Red and black?”

“I told you. We’ll drift fine.” Elektra smiled. Elektra smiled! It was a genuine smile that tugged her lips up and parted them to show her teeth, and it was directed at her. “And it is a good colour combination.”

Natasha watched her black wavy hair straddle the red jumpsuit. It is a good colour combination, she thought, smiling.

That was when the red and the black bled out of Elektra. Everything was in red and black now, shadows and blood, shadows in where she belonged, blood on which her soul had fed, there was a distant scream, or was it a lot of screams merging into one, she had heard so many screams, she had learned to tune them out, or maybe she simply ran away from them, she was always so quick on her feet, and they had caught up with her—

—she couldn’t move. They were no longer in the hangar, they were—

two figures, one sobbing, one limp in the other’s arms

Daddy daddy please be alive

But she’d never had a daddy. Her father and mother died so long ago, she could hardly remember their faces. But this face, the one in front of her, she knew. Black curls jumping on shaking shoulders, hands covered in blood covering bloody face, later clutching the hair madly.

“Get out,” hissed Elektra, looking up with a face painted in broad strokes in red for the anger and the pain, and black for the mourning and the grief.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“You failed.”

Fury paused. Sighed. Corrected himself:  “Elektra failed.”

“ _We_ failed,” Natasha re-corrected him, “this time.” She paused to dab at the blood still flowing from her nose. “Look, Nick, this was our first Drift. Things like this happen. What matters is that we achieved neural handshake, it was going well—”

“Until it didn’t,” said Fury sharply. “Tasha, you know how important this mission is. You know I can’t take any chances.”

Natasha clenched the edge of the table hard and stared at Fury with a cold, level gaze. “I need her as my co-pilot. I could sense it, Nick, we…  _clicked._ ” She thought of the dance they both danced, and the red and the black which were the colours of the insides of their head. “You know how good we are. We’re the best of the best.”

“Individually, yes, but that means shit in a Jaeger, Tasha.”

She grinned. “We’re going to be real great as a team, Nick. We are what this mission needs. And I’m asking you just for one more chance,” she paused again, this time for dramatic effect because the blood had stopped trickling from her nose, and she had balled the tissue in her fist, “one more chance to show you just that.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Elektra could have left the Shatterdome as easily as she had come. But she didn’t. She opened the door to her room on the third knock and invited Natasha in by turning her back to her and telling her to close the door behind her.

Their failure this afternoon hurt Elektra more than Natasha. She had stopped twitching (so much earlier than expected, a medical marvel which could only be attributed to her ninja training), but her eyes were still bloodshot, and the black angular wastepaper bin beside the bed was full of bloodied tissue papers. She had changed into the regulation grey shirt (the blood-stained jumpsuit was hanging at the back of the chair she was standing beside) and was barefoot; Natasha felt self-conscious about her boots. There was a mug of what smelled like herbal tea on the desk, still steaming.

“The earliest thing I could remember is killing Byelliy, my pet rabbit for a week with a pen knife,” said Natasha, “I think I was … seven.” She shrugged. “We didn’t see this memory just now, but we might next time we Drift.”

Elektra’s arms were crossed against her chest, and they tightened when Natasha finished her sentence, just like the muscles under her eyebrows. “‘Next time we Drift’?”

“In three days’ time,” smiled Natasha. “I don’t much care for the skeletons in your closet, but I understand why you want to keep them hidden. There are so many things in here,” she tapped her head, “I’ve buried so deep I might have forgotten about them. I’ve made peace with my past, but there are certain things I’d rather forget, much less let others see.”

“We can’t control the Drift.”

“Yes. But I’m here out of my own choice; I’m here opening my head to you out of my own vocation.  _I’m here to finish the job,_  and skeletons in my closet be damned.”

Elektra took the mug from the desk and sipped it. “Don’t worry, Romanova. I always finish the job.”

Natasha’s smile widened into a grin. “You couldn’t kill me last week!”

It was her first time seeing Elektra slightly flustered: she set the mug down rather abruptly and crossed her arms again. “That doesn’t count. One, I was playing with my food, and two, before I was done playing with it I was offered a better job.” She raised her hands in a small shrug. “It’s simple economics.

“If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead.” She let a smirk tug her lips, and then she hid it behind the mug.

“That’s just what I was thinking,” said Natasha as she walked towards the door, stopping to turn at her partner to throw the smirk back at her, “We’re already in each other’s head it seems. We’ll Drift just fine.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the Drift ghosts flash by, recreating lives, loves, laughs in brief, speeded-up clips. Your brain can’t catch up with all of the images passing by, and most of the time you merely watch memories float past like a fascinated but lost tourist. Sometimes your brain hooks on a memory both co-pilots share in an effort to maintain your sanity. When you experience a memory it’s not always in real time—everything washes over you in a split of a second, but your brain rationalises it, untangles it, and you make sense of that flash of memory as how you experienced (or how you remember experiencing) it. That’s not the same as chasing a RABIT—you the pilot are not actively chasing a memory. You’re still Drifting, and this is just the process of how your brain copes with swimming through so many memories.

Natasha watched their first dance again. Their first meeting together with their Jaeger. The little talk in her room. And then she saw her on the floor cradling a man’s bloodied body. And then another her cradling another man’s body with a sai stuck on his chest. And then a little rabbit with its neck twisted.

They Drifted in red and black. It was over before she could blink; she raised her left hand and she didn’t have to turn to know that Elektra did too.

“Neural handshake achieved,” said Fujikawa’s voice over the speaker.

“Don’t get cocky,” warned Fury, “this is where you fucked up last time. Take one step to your right, and then left, then front, and then back.”

Their left leg always moved first. Red and black memories danced in the corner of her eyes. Natasha heard a snatch of Swan Lake, and then a roar of applause. She ignored it.

“Simulation starting in ten. We’re going to put you up against a level one Kaiju.”

“Level one, Rumiko?” said Natasha. She was pretty sure that a lot of the cockiness was Elektra’s too. She felt really good—being connected to an almost 2000 tons robot tends to do that to a person. Or virtually connected—after all, she was only in a simulation Conn-pod and not in their nameless Jaeger’s.

“Eight.”

 “Don’t. Get. Cocky,” snarled Fury. “I’m reminding you just this once. The programmer’s built in a lot of weapons into the simulation Jaeger. Pick three you like best and we’ll hook your Jaeger up with them. After that, you’re stuck with what you’ve got.”

“One.”

The calm Pacific ocean on the screen tore open and a Kaiju leaped at them. The Aikido evade-and-throw was Elektra’s idea (not as much an idea as it was an instinct), and they executed it perfectly. She felt like she could take on the Kaiju barehanded—or was this Elektra’s sentiment? (which she agreed with).

Or they could play with it. They had got so many toys to choose from here.

(Memories pricked at the edge of her concentration. She saw a burning building. She felt a small lurch as if she was falling. She ignored them.)

“No sais,” said Elektra aloud even though Natasha could feel her disappointment rippling through her own body. The Kaiju, a blue-grey bipedal armoured salamander with two devil horns and a scorpion sting on its tail, was squirming, struggling to get on its feet. They kicked it away.

Fury’s voice crackled in their ears. “I can’t believe I have to remind you grown up ladies but. Take this seriously.”

“We are, Nick,” replied Natasha as she scrolled through the list and found what were in effect guns, except the bullets come out of the Jaeger’s wrists. Serious and fun weren’t exclusive after all.

 

 

 

 

 

It was hot in the Kwoon Combat Room. The mat they were standing on was slick with sweat. Under her headgear her hair was a tangled wet mess, and sweat was dripping out of her gloves and her shin guards. She could hear Elektra beside her, breathing faster and shorter than before. It wasn’t just her—all four of them were tired. There was still one minute before this round—the tenth—would end, and this match would go on for maybe ten more rounds, until a team finally gives up.

Marathon partner sparring session was not something any Ranger looked forward to.

“You know what’s your problem?” said James when they were in the mess hall an hour later. He was shovelling yoghurt into his mouth. Natasha’s stomach wasn’t ready for anything yet. “Not just yours. Or Natchios’s. Spector’s and Castle’s too. All of you think you’re the lone wolf, like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulder.”

Spector punched a test jab at her and she merely brushed it away, already looking out for the hook she just knew was coming. Maybe he expected her to duck, but she moved back, gaining the distance he needed to feint a kick, and then a knee to his gut. Which he caught.

“Look who’s talking,” replied Natasha, smiling teasingly, “James, just because you’d found…”

"Rediscovered."

"…your One True Partner doesn’t mean you get to lecture me.”

In quickly retracting her knee and steadying herself Natasha had hopped back and bumped into Elektra, who was just getting in position to throw a charging Castle. Natasha thought she saw her eyes roll, and she made it a point to mirror her annoyed face, but she stepped forward, slightly to Castle’s left, bringing her to a beautiful distance to deliver a cross to the side of his face.

She turned to see Elektra catching Spector’s kick, and then ducking under his elbow.

“Someone has to,” said James, waving his spoon, “Now eat your veggies.” He tapped the table beside her food. “Tasha, you’re damn bloody good. So is Natchios—”

“Really?”

“Well, almost,” he grinned, “you two know that better than anyone. But it’s like you guys are still trying to prove something to each other.”

 Castle went down, but that was a feint; he caught her knees in his legs and he brought her down. While she was falling she saw him turn to his partner and nodded and the next thing she knew Elektra had tripped over and collapsed on her.

“Even those two,” said James, jerking his spoon over his shoulder.  Castle and Spector were eating at an otherwise empty table, sitting very far apart from each other. “they’re sometimes capable of working together.”

“They do have a marine background.”

“Yeah, I guess, but they’re still psychos.” James had been trying to emulate Steve, but he certainly wasn’t taking after his optimism in his other people. “So what’s the deal, Tasha? You tryin’ to impress her?”

Elektra’s face ended somewhere very near hers. She was too aware of her own chest rising up and down rapidly against her arm. She could feel the air she was exhaling through her mouth-guard. The bell dinged.

 

 

 

 

During today’s Drift session Natasha found out that they shared an ex-boyfriend. They also tested Stendhal Gale’s newly installed weapons. The twin blades protruding from each fist. The wrist-guns. The arm-blades.

Stendhal Gale. Fury came up with the name. They didn’t find it objectionable.

They watched the engineers and mechanics servicing Stendhal Gale after the session was over. She stood proudly in her new red and black coating and across it, far behind them, the war clock ticked on. 

**Author's Note:**

> It's so tricky to write AUs, especially set in a universe as great as Pacific Rim's! I tried my best to keep to the spirit of not just the characters, but also the Pacific Rim world itself. I hope I didn't disappoint or offend anyone with this!


End file.
